THE MOST sensible – I
almost wrote “the only sensible” – sentence uttered this week sprang from the
lips of a 5-year old boy.

After the prisoner swap,
one of those smart-aleck TV reporters asked him: “Why did we release 1027 Arabs
for one Israeli soldier?” He expected, of course, the usual answer: because one
Israeli is worth a thousand Arabs.

The little boy replied:
“Because we caught many of them and they caught only one.”

FOR MORE than a week, the
whole of Israel
was in a state of intoxication. Gilad Shalit indeed ruled the country (Shalit
means “ruler”). His pictures were plastered all over the place like those of
Comrade Kim in North Korea.

It was one of those rare
moments, when Israelis could be proud of themselves. Few countries, if any,
would have been prepared to exchange 1027 prisoners for one. In most places,
including the USA,
it would have been politically impossible for a leader to make such a decision.

In a way it is a
continuation of the Jewish ghetto tradition. The “Redemption of Prisoners” is a
sacred religious duty, born of the circumstances of a persecuted and scattered
community. If a Jew from Marseilles
was captured by Muslim corsairs to be sold on the market of
Alexandria, it was the duty of Jews in
Cairo
to pay the ransom and “redeem” him.

As the ancient saying
goes: “All Israel
are guarantors for each other”.

Israelis could (and did)
look in the mirror and say “aren’t we wonderful?”

IMMEDIATELY AFTER the
Oslo
agreement, Gush Shalom, the peace movement to which I belong, proposed releasing
all Palestinian prisoners at once. They are prisoners-of-war, we said, and when
the fighting ends, PoWs are sent home. This would transmit a powerful human
message of peace to every Palestinian town and village. We organized a joint
demonstration with the late Jerusalemite Arab leader, Feisal Husseini, in front
of Jeneid prison near Nablus.
More than ten thousand Palestinians and Israelis took part.

But
Israel
has never recognized these Palestinians as prisoners-of-war. They are considered
common criminals, only worse.

This week, the released
prisoners were never referred to as “Palestinian fighters”, or “militants”’ or
just “Palestinians”. Every single newspaper and TV program, from the elitist
Haaretz to the most primitive tabloid, referred to them exclusively as
“murderers”, or, for good measure, “vile murderers”.

One of the worst
tyrannies on earth is the tyranny of words. Once a word becomes entrenched, it
directs thought and action. As the Bible has it: “Death and life are in the
power of the tongue” (Proverbs 18:21). Releasing a thousand enemy fighters is
one thing, releasing a thousand vile murderers is something else.

Some of these prisoners
have assisted suicide bombers in killing a lot of people. Some have committed
really atrocious acts – like the pretty young Palestinian woman who used the
internet to lure a love-sick Israeli boy of 15 into a trap, where he was riddled
with bullets. But others were sentenced to life for belonging to an “illegal
organization” and possessing arms, or for throwing an ineffectual home made bomb
at a bus hurting nobody.

Almost all of them were
convicted by military courts. As has been said, military courts have the same
relation to real courts as military music does to real music.

All of these prisoners,
in Israeli parlance, have “blood on their hands”. But which of us Israelis has
no blood on his hands? Sure, a young woman soldier remotely controlling a drone
that kills a Palestinian suspect and his entire family has no sticky blood on
her hands. Neither has a pilot who drops a bomb on a residential neighborhood
and feels only “a slight bump on the wing”, as a former Chief of Staff put it.
(A Palestinian once told me: “Give me a tank or a fighter plane, and I shall
give up terrorism immediately.”)

The main argument against
the swap was that, according to Security Service statistics, 15% of prisoners
thus released become active “terrorists” again. Perhaps. But the majority of
them become active supporters of peace. Practically all of my Palestinian
friends are former prisoners, some of whom were behind bars for 12 years and
more. They learned Hebrew in prison, became acquainted with Israeli life by
watching television and even began to admire some aspects of
Israel, such as our parliamentary democracy.
Most prisoners just want to go home, settle down and found a family.

But during the endless
hours of waiting for Gilad’s return, all our TV stations showed scenes of the
killings in which the prisoners-to-be-released had been involved, such as the
young woman who drove a bomber to his destination. It was a continuous tirade of
hatred. Our warm admiration for our own virtue was mingled with the chilling
feeling that we are again the victims, compelled to release vile murderers who
are going to try and kill us again.

Yet all these prisoners
fervently believed that they had served their people in its struggle for
liberation. Like the famous song: “Shoot me as an Irish soldier / Do not hang me
like a dog / For I fought for Ireland’s freedom…” Nelson Mandela,
it should be remembered, was an active terrorist who languished in prison for 28
years because he refused to sign a statement condemning terrorism.

Israelis (probably like
most peoples) are quite unable to put themselves into the shoes of their
adversaries. This makes it practically impossible to pursue an intelligent
policy, particularly on this issue.

HOW WAS Binyamin
Netanyahu brought to bend?

The hero of the campaign
is Noam Shalit, the father. An introverted person, withdrawn and shy of
publicity, he came out and fought for his son every single day during these five
years and four months. So did the mother. They literally saved his life. They
succeeded in raising a mass movement without precedent in the annals of the
state.

It helped that Gilad
looks like everybody’s son. He is a shy young man with an engaging smile that
could be seen on each of the stills and videos from before the capture. He was
youngish looking, thin and unassuming. Five years later, this week, he still
looked the same, only very pale.

If our intelligence
services had been able to locate him, they would have undoubtedly tried to
liberate him by force. This could well have been his death sentence, as happened
so often in the past. The fact that they could not find him, despite their
hundreds of agents in the Gaza Strip, is a remarkable achievement for
Hamas. It explains why he was kept in strict isolation and was not allowed to
meet anyone.

Israelis were relieved to
discover, on his release, that he seemed to be in good condition, healthy and
alert. From the few sentences he voiced on his way in Egypt, he had
been provided with radio and TV and knew about his parents’ efforts.

From the moment he set
foot on Israeli soil, almost nothing about the way he was treated was allowed to
come out. Where was he kept? How was the food? Did his captors talk with him?
What did he think about them? Did he learn Arabic? Up to now, not a word about
that, probably because it might throw some positive light on Hamas. He will
certainly be thoroughly briefed before being allowed to speak.

FOREIGN CORRESPONDENTS
repeatedly asked me this week whether the deal had opened the way to a new peace
process. As far as the public mood is concerned, the very opposite is true.

The same journalists
asked me if Binyamin Netanyahu had not been disturbed by the fact that the swap
was bound to strengthen Hamas and deal a grievous blow to Mahmoud Abbas. They
were flabbergasted by my answer: that this was one of its main purposes, if not
the main one.

The master stroke was a
stroke against Abbas.

Abbas’ moves in the UN
have profoundly disturbed our right-wing government. Even if the only practical
outcome is a resolution of the General Assembly to recognize the State of
Palestine
as an observer state, it will be a major step towards a real Palestinian state.

This government, like all
our governments since the foundation of Israel – only
more so – is dead set against Palestinian statehood. It would put an end to the
dream of a Greater Israel up
to the Jordan River, compel us to give back a
great chunk of the Land-God-Promised-Us and evacuate scores of settlements.

For Netanyahu and Co.
this is the real danger. Hamas poses no danger at all. What can they do? Launch
a few rockets, kill a few people – so what? In no year has “terrorism” killed as
many as half the people dying on our roads. Israel can deal
with that. The Hamas regime would probably not be running the
Gaza
Strip in the first place if Israel
had not cut the Strip off from the West Bank, contrary to its solemn undertaking
in Oslo
to create four safe passages. None was ever opened.

That, by the way, also
explains the timing. Why did Netanyahu agree now to something he has violently
opposed all his life? Because Abbas, the featherless chicken, has suddenly
turned into an eagle.

On the day of the swap,
Abbas made a speech. It sounded rather flat. For the average Palestinian, the
case was quite simple: Abbas, with all his Israeli and American friends, has got
no one released for years. Hamas, using force, has released more than a
thousand, including Fatah members. Ergo: “Israel
understands only the language of force”.

THE VAST majority of
Israelis supported the deal, though convinced that the vile murderers will try
again to kill us.

Never were the lines of
division as clear as this time: some 25% opposed it. These included all the
extreme right-wing, all the settlers and almost all the national-religious. All
the others – the huge camp of the center and left, the secular, liberal and
moderate religious - supported it.

This is the Israeli
mainstream on which the hopes for the future are resting. If Netanyahu had
proposed a peace agreement with the Palestinians this week, and if he had been
supported by the chiefs of the army, the Mossad and the Security Service (as he
was this week), the same majority would have supported him.

As for the prisoners –
another 4000 are still held in Israeli prisons, and this number is liable to
grow again. The opponents of the deal are quite right in saying that it will
provide Palestinian organizations with a strong incentive to renew their efforts
to capture Israeli soldiers in order to get more prisoners released.

If all of
Israel
is drunk with emotion because one boy has been returned to his family – what
about 4000 families on the other side? Unfortunately, ordinary Israelis don’t
put the question this way. They have got used to seeing the Palestinian
prisoners only as bargaining chips.

How to thwart the efforts
to capture more soldiers? There is only one alternative: to open a credible way
to have them released by agreement.